Atos is an international information technology services company with annual revenue of EUR 8.8 billion and 77,100 employees in 52 countries. Serving a global client base, it delivers IT services in 3 domains, Consulting & Technology Services, Systems Integration and Managed Services & BPO and transactional services through Worldline.

In 2009 Atos was asked to drastically reduce the costs of the UCS application (Universal Clearing System): the compensation engine for the Euronext Cash (stocks and bonds) and derivatives markets in the Euro zone. In the financial sector, clearing is exercised by aggregating all purchases and sales by the type of product/assets held by each account holder, resulting in a balance of net payables or receivables as well as the net flows of securities delivered or received.

Challenges 

• Migrate from a proprietary HP NonStop-SQL/MP environment towards an open source …

Acteur international des services informatiques avec un chiffre d’affaires annuel de 8,8 milliards d’euros et 77,100 collaborateurs dans 52 pays, Atos fournit à ses clients du monde entier des services informatiques dans 3 domaines, Conseil & Services Technologiques, Intégration de Systèmes et Infogérance & BPO, ainsi que Services Transactionnels de Haute Technologie avec Worldline.

En 2009, Atos s’est vu confier le projet de réduire drastiquement les coûts du moteur de compensation des marchés Cash (actions et obligations) et Produits Dérivés d’Euronext en Zone euro: l’application UCS (Universal Clearing System). Dans le domaine financier, la compensation, ou le "clearing", s'exerce par l'agrégat de toutes les positions d'achats et de ventes par type de produit/actif détenu par chaque teneur de compte, et se matérialise par un solde net dû ou à recevoir ainsi que par des flux nets de titres à livrer ou …

1. ZeroMQ -- bold claim of "Fastest. Messaging. Ever." LGPL, C++ with bindings for many languages, past version 2 already. (via edd on Twitter)
2. Prediction Market News (David Pennock) -- HSX is going to be a real marketplace with real $. The real HSX will of course say goodbye to the virtual specialist and the opening weekend adjust, two facets of the game that make it fun to play, but that create significant amounts of (virtual) wealth out of thin air. The Cantor Gaming group is engaged in other interesting initiatives. They are taking over a sportsbook in Las Vegas and turning it into more of a derivatives exchange with live in-game betting, a step toward my dream of a geek-friendly casino. …

A special extended edition of Tech Messages for 2010-02-20 through 2010-02-24:

• Gartner EXP Worldwide Survey of Nearly 1,600 CIOs Shows IT Budgets in 2010 to be at 2005 Levels
  Virtualization tops the technology priorities.
• Cisco Offers Three-Year, Zero-Percent Financing to U.S. Small and Medium-Sized Businesses -> Cisco News
• Marc Alff's blog: Performance schema overview
  Really interesting stuff for MySQL developers.
• …